Dysart Unified School District's test-centered grade policy protested

by Eddi Trevizo - Sept. 20, 2012 10:54 AMThe Republic | azcentral.com

A new grading policy at the Dysart Unified School District is under fire from some parents who say it lowers students' grades. But district officials said the new policy gives students plenty of chances to raise a low score.

This is the first school year that the district has implemented its new grading structure for students in seventh through 12th grades, said Teresa Heatherly, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Dysart district.

Dysart has 24,000 students, four high schools and 20 elementary schools.

Under the new rules, students' classwork, homework, projects, assessments and final exams are weighted to provide a final grade in each school subject. According to a district video about the guidelines, homework and classwork account for 10 percent of the overall grade, projects are 20 percent, the final exam accounts for 10 percent and assessments are 60 percent.

Assessments measure how well a student has learned the content taught in class. They include quizzes, unit tests, exams, labs, in-class assignments and written papers, according to the district.

Some parents at Valley Vista High School in Surprise said the school's math department isn't complying with the grading formula. For math, tests are 80 percent of students' overall grades because teachers count the tests as both projects and assessments.

The new guidelines permit Valley Vista to calculate math grades this way, school officials say.

According to the district's grading guidelines, available online, "for courses that are project based such as Career and Technical Education, the project and assessment category may be combined to 80 percent."

Some parents say too much testing is stressful for students.

Cheryl Martin, said her son, a senior at Valley Vista, is failing his math class because he didn't do well on two class assessments. She started an online petition, which asks the school to count math assessments as 60 percent of the grade instead of 80 percent. The petition had 34 online supporters as of Monday morning.

Martin says that she contacted several board members and the school principal, Dannene Truett.

Regardless of how many times a student can retake a test, if assessments are 80 percent of a grade and the final is 10 percent, then 90 percent of a student's grade is determined through testing, Martin said.

She wants homework, projects and classwork to balance the grades, especially for students who don't test well, like her son.

"The problem is that the tests are weighed so much that it seems like the more homework you do, the less it matters," Martin said. Her son, Nicholas, 17, is enrolled in Algebra 3-4, the third of four total math credits he needs to graduate.

Nicholas said he has completed all of his homework requirements and he knows that he could retake the tests to get a higher grade. The pressure of doing retakes, in addition to the steady flow of homework, classwork and in-class testing is too much to handle, he said.

The grading system affects students' ability to participate in sports or extracurricular activities, because tutoring and retaking tests swallows up free time, he added.

"A significant amount of students that I have talked to have said it's more difficult to get a good grade," Nicholas said.

Now, the high-school senior worries he'll have to give up music practice to focus on tutoring and retakes. Nicholas plays guitar, drums and bass after school.

"If I'm not doing well in grades, my parents aren't going to let me play. I have to focus on getting my grades up," Nicholas said.

The new system may require some adjustment from students, district officials said. However, the guidelines give them more control over their grade because they can keep retaking any assessments until they're satisfied with their scores. The test with the highest score is used to calculate the student's grade.

The Republic asked the district to provide additional information about the impact of the new policy, including how many parents have reported concerns about grading, how many students are failing courses, how many students are retaking tests and how many students are being tutored. Dysart officials said that they were unable to provide information about failing grades and tutoring because the records do not exist. The district did not respond to TheRepublic's request for information about concerned parents.

Valley Vista is in compliance with district grading policies and doesn't weigh assessments more than the district allows, said Truett, the principal.

In an e-mail to Martin on Sept. 7, 2012, Truett wrote "in a department (math) that does not do projects, they have been permitted by district to combine the project and the assessment categories into one at an 80 (percent) value."

Truett added that students have extensive retake and tutoring opportunities. The retake policy doesn't apply only to students with failing grades. Students with passing grades are also allowed to retake exams if they want higher scores.

Students can retake assessments as many times as they choose within about four weeks of the day the assessment was taken, according to Heatherly and district guidelines.

"Only the highest score is kept in the grade book," Truett sasid in an interview.

The retake policy is intended to lower stress, officials said, because it gives students more chances to improve grades than under the previous grading structure.

To retake assessments students must have 80 percent of class assignments completed and must show evidence of tutoring or further study, signed by either parents or tutors.

In addition to the retake policy, the district built study time and hours for extra help into school days. Intervention period is a 30-minute block of time, available to students Tuesday through Thursday, for retake opportunities or help from teachers. This is the second year that the district has had intervention period, which is offered three times a week.

The district also offers before- and after-school tutoring for students on most days.

The new policy also takes into account grade eligibility for athletes, Truett said. Students must have passing grades to play on school-sponsored teams.

The district posts an eligibility report for athletes every two weeks. Athletes with failing grades for two consecutive reports are not eligible to play. That means athletes basically have a four-week period to bring up their grades.